I have worn the leg warmers. The high-cut leotard pulled over bike shorts, the thong-over-the-tights look that somehow passed for athletic wear in those days.
I taught “aerobics” back when we still called it aerobics, then step, then every high-energy format that came through the studio door. For years, a room full of women grapevining to a loud beat was my office, and I loved every minute of it.
The part most instructors skipped came at the very end. While the room expected a gentle stretch and a wave goodbye, I had everyone dropping into squats, lunges, pushups, and balance work. Functional strength, before the industry bothered to give it a name. I could already see that staying power comes from training the heart, the lungs, and the muscles to work together, so a woman could get off the floor at seventy, haul her own suitcase, and keep pace with a grandchild who has no concept of slowing down.
That instinct grew into more than thirty years in the fitness world, and it still shapes how I think about movement. It also points to a word I want you to sit with: Endurance. The capacity to keep going, through a long day on your feet, the third hour of a family gathering, the hill on your morning walk that used to feel flat.
Plenty of people hear the word cardio and picture a sweaty class and a number climbing on a treadmill. The goal sits somewhere far more useful. We are training for the life we want to keep up with, and that asks for a heart and a body that can go the distance side by side.
Why endurance earns its keep
The research on cardiorespiratory fitness is hard to wave away. Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic followed more than 120,000 patients and found that every meaningful gain in fitness lined up with roughly a 9 to 15 percent drop in mortality risk. A separate analysis of more than 750,000 adults pointed the same direction. And a 2026 study of more than 11,000 Australian women across fifteen years found that those who stayed consistently active through their fifties and sixties were about half as likely to die early as the women who didn’t.
I read numbers like that through one lens. The strongest thread in everything I teach at LAYLO wellness is connection, because strong relationships shape how long and how well we live more than most of us realize. Endurance is what keeps you physically able to live that connected life. It decides whether you say yes to the weekend away or beg off because you are worn out by noon.
Five simple habits that build real endurance
You will not find a punishing program here. Build these in slowly and let them stack.
- Walk at a pace you can talk through but would rather not sing through. Three sessions a week, around thirty minutes each, is a fine place to start. That comfortably hard effort builds your aerobic base, and your stamina answers to consistency far more than intensity. A steady walk you actually repeat beats a brutal one you abandon by Thursday.
- Take the stairs you currently avoid. Pick one set you usually skip, at the garage, the store, your own house. Stairs ask your heart and legs to fire together in short bursts, which is the exact effort that keeps everyday movement feeling easy. Start with a single flight and add from there.
- Add one faster minute to a walk you already take. Partway through, lift the pace until your breath turns noticeably quicker, hold it for a minute, then ease back. These short surges teach your heart to recover faster, and quick recovery is what gets you through a travel day or an afternoon chasing the little ones.
- Finish your walk the way I finished my classes. Two minutes of strength at the end. A set of squats, a few wall pushups, thirty seconds balancing on one foot. Endurance without functional strength leaves you breathless and still unable to rise from a low chair, so the two belong together. This was my signature move on the studio floor, and it still works.
- Move with your people. Plan one walk a week with a friend in place of a sit-down phone call. Research tracking thousands of adults over 50 found that people with strong friendships moved about 9 percent more than those without them. Your circle pulls your body along, and a walking conversation tends to run longer than a seated one. Physical and social wellness feeding each other is the whole point of what we build at LAYLO wellness.
Your future self is watching
After thirty, an untrained body loses around 10 percent of its cardiorespiratory fitness each decade. Stay active, and that loss drops to about half. Two women the same age can land in very different bodies ten years from now, and the deciding factor is the habits above far more than genetics or luck.
I find that freeing. The reserve answers to what you do this week, not to what you did in your leg-warmer years. So choose one habit and begin it today. The woman who keeps up with the trip, the grandkids, and the full table at dinner without a second thought gets built on ordinary Tuesdays. Go build her.
LAYLO wellness centers social wellness—supported by mental clarity and movement—to help you live and work with more steadiness, connection, and longevity.
The LAYLO Editis where I share thoughtful, practical insight for real life.
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